Active safety is one of the focuses in the development of present-day and also future vehicle systems. Known systems in the area of active safety, meaning accident avoidance, are, for example the electronic stability program (ESP) for stabilizing a vehicle by braking intervention in extreme driving situations as well as vehicle dynamics management (VDM) as an extension of ESP through additional steering interventions.
Besides vehicle stabilization systems, systems for triggering emergency braking are also known, which automatically intervene when a danger of a collision is detected, for example, based on environmental detection using radar and/or video sensors.
Furthermore, a large number of park assist devices are known which assist a driver when parking in a great variety of ways. Thus a park assist device is known from printed publication German Published Patent Application No. 198 09 416 which calculates a parking strategy as a function of the size of the potential parking space and informs the driver of the motor vehicle of this parking strategy; however, it leaves it up to the driver to decide whether to use the parking strategy.
Furthermore, in dangerous situations, average drivers often have problems with avoiding obstacles through a suitable steering maneuver. It is thus seen, for example, in driver safety training that steering is performed too late, too fast or too slowly, too much or too little or even not at all and in addition, that countersteering is performed incorrectly or not at all, for example, in a double lane change. This results either in a collision with an obstacle or an instability, for example, skidding of the vehicle.
Printed publication European Published Patent Application No. 0 970 875 describes a system intended to use steering actuators to prevent the driver from setting a steering angle leading to a collision or which automatically sets an avoidance course if necessary. In this system, the technical system decides if, when and in what direction an avoidance is made, thus relieving the driver of this. However, a technical implementation of this avoidance decision requires a high expense for sensors and brings up legal problems in terms of liability law, for example.